{"id":117,"date":"2010-11-23T11:54:41","date_gmt":"2010-11-23T11:54:41","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/religionandpubliclife\/2010\/11\/how-the-vatican-adjusts-itself.html"},"modified":"2010-11-23T11:54:41","modified_gmt":"2010-11-23T11:54:41","slug":"how-the-vatican-adjusts-itself","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/religionandpubliclife\/2010\/11\/how-the-vatican-adjusts-itself.html","title":{"rendered":"How the Vatican adjusts itself"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>So now Vatican spokesman Rev. Federico Lombardi has gone to the mountain and <a href=\"http:\/\/www.google.com\/hostednews\/ap\/article\/ALeqM5hJU2dz_FwsPjYGXFjYDkbEH5VHfA?docId=d01ae88980c54a2da67605575ea0e7f6\">come back<\/a><br \/>\nwith confirmation that the pope not only said what he meant but also<br \/>\nmeant what Austin Ivereigh said he meant&#8211;that the use of condoms for<br \/>\nthe sake of preventing infection was a step in the right moral direction<br \/>\nfor women (and transsexuals) as well as male prostitutes:<\/p>\n<blockquote>\n<p>&#8220;I personally asked the pope if there was a serious, important<br \/>\nproblem in the choice of the masculine over the feminine,&#8221; Lombardi<br \/>\nsaid. &#8220;He told me no. The problem is this &#8230; It&#8217;s the first step of<br \/>\ntaking responsibility, of taking into consideration the risk of the life<br \/>\nof another with whom you have a relationship.&#8221;<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<blockquote>\n<p>&#8220;This is if you&#8217;re<br \/>\na man, a woman, or a transsexual. We&#8217;re at the same point. The point is<br \/>\nit&#8217;s a first step of taking responsibility, of avoiding passing a grave<br \/>\nrisk onto another,&#8221; Lombardi said.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p>That, Rev. Jim Martin told the AP, is &#8220;a game-changer.&#8221; For the full Martinization, check out his <a href=\"http:\/\/www.americamagazine.org\/blog\/entry.cfm?blog_id=2&amp;entry_id=3588\">post<\/a> over at In All Things. Meanwhile, Mollie gives Cathy Grossman a <a href=\"http:\/\/www.getreligion.org\/2010\/11\/vatican-condomania-the-day-after\/\">pat on the back<\/a> for taking the &#8220;nothing new here line&#8221; <a href=\"http:\/\/content.usatoday.com\/communities\/Religion\/post\/2010\/11\/condoms-pope-benedict-hiv-catholic-church\/1\">on her <i>USA Today <\/i>blog<\/a> . Methinks some rethinking is in order. OMG, could the MSM have got it right? Could this be exactly how the See of Peter contrives shifts of position?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>So now Vatican spokesman Rev. Federico Lombardi has gone to the mountain and come back with confirmation that the pope not only said what he meant but also meant what Austin Ivereigh said he meant&#8211;that the use of condoms for the sake of preventing infection was a step in the right moral direction for women&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":222,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-117","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v23.9 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>How the Vatican adjusts itself - Religion &amp; Public Life With Mark Silk<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/religionandpubliclife\/2010\/11\/how-the-vatican-adjusts-itself.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"How the Vatican adjusts itself - Religion &amp; Public Life With Mark Silk\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"So now Vatican spokesman Rev. Federico Lombardi has gone to the mountain and come back with confirmation that the pope not only said what he meant but also meant what Austin Ivereigh said he meant&#8211;that the use of condoms for the sake of preventing infection was a step in the right moral direction for women&hellip;\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/religionandpubliclife\/2010\/11\/how-the-vatican-adjusts-itself.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Religion &amp; Public Life With Mark Silk\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2010-11-23T11:54:41+00:00\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"Mark Silk\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<!-- \/ Yoast SEO plugin. -->","yoast_head_json":{"title":"How the Vatican adjusts itself - Religion &amp; Public Life With Mark Silk","robots":{"index":"index","follow":"follow","max-snippet":"max-snippet:-1","max-image-preview":"max-image-preview:large","max-video-preview":"max-video-preview:-1"},"canonical":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/religionandpubliclife\/2010\/11\/how-the-vatican-adjusts-itself.html","og_locale":"en_US","og_type":"article","og_title":"How the Vatican adjusts itself - Religion &amp; Public Life With Mark Silk","og_description":"So now Vatican spokesman Rev. Federico Lombardi has gone to the mountain and come back with confirmation that the pope not only said what he meant but also meant what Austin Ivereigh said he meant&#8211;that the use of condoms for the sake of preventing infection was a step in the right moral direction for women&hellip;","og_url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/religionandpubliclife\/2010\/11\/how-the-vatican-adjusts-itself.html","og_site_name":"Religion &amp; Public Life With Mark Silk","article_published_time":"2010-11-23T11:54:41+00:00","author":"Mark Silk","twitter_card":"summary_large_image","schema":{"@context":"https:\/\/schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/religionandpubliclife\/2010\/11\/how-the-vatican-adjusts-itself.html","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/religionandpubliclife\/2010\/11\/how-the-vatican-adjusts-itself.html","name":"How the Vatican adjusts itself - Religion &amp; Public Life With Mark Silk","isPartOf":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/religionandpubliclife\/#website"},"datePublished":"2010-11-23T11:54:41+00:00","dateModified":"2010-11-23T11:54:41+00:00","author":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/religionandpubliclife\/#\/schema\/person\/927f8b0a579506efe527e8e0967f519d"},"breadcrumb":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/religionandpubliclife\/2010\/11\/how-the-vatican-adjusts-itself.html#breadcrumb"},"inLanguage":"en-US","potentialAction":[{"@type":"ReadAction","target":["https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/religionandpubliclife\/2010\/11\/how-the-vatican-adjusts-itself.html"]}]},{"@type":"BreadcrumbList","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/religionandpubliclife\/2010\/11\/how-the-vatican-adjusts-itself.html#breadcrumb","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"name":"Home","item":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/religionandpubliclife"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"name":"How the Vatican adjusts itself"}]},{"@type":"WebSite","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/religionandpubliclife\/#website","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/religionandpubliclife\/","name":"Religion &amp; Public Life With Mark Silk","description":"Beliefnet Voices","potentialAction":[{"@type":"SearchAction","target":{"@type":"EntryPoint","urlTemplate":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/religionandpubliclife\/?s={search_term_string}"},"query-input":{"@type":"PropertyValueSpecification","valueRequired":true,"valueName":"search_term_string"}}],"inLanguage":"en-US"},{"@type":"Person","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/religionandpubliclife\/#\/schema\/person\/927f8b0a579506efe527e8e0967f519d","name":"Mark Silk","image":{"@type":"ImageObject","inLanguage":"en-US","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/religionandpubliclife\/#\/schema\/person\/image\/","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/religionandpubliclife\/wp-content\/wphb-cache\/gravatar\/c82\/c82eec82562775fad85f4a47e1a5fc4ax96.jpg","contentUrl":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/religionandpubliclife\/wp-content\/wphb-cache\/gravatar\/c82\/c82eec82562775fad85f4a47e1a5fc4ax96.jpg","caption":"Mark Silk"},"description":"Mark Silk graduated from Harvard College in 1972 and earned his Ph.D. in medieval history from Harvard University in 1982. After teaching at Harvard in the Department of History and Literature for three years, he became editor of the Boston Review. In 1987 he joined the staff of the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, where he worked variously as a reporter, editorial writer and columnist. In 1996 he became the founding director of the Leonard E. Greenberg Center for the Study of Religion in Public Life at Trinity College and in 1998 founding editor of Religion in the News, a magazine published by the Center that examines how the news media handle religious subject matter. In 2005, he was named director of the Trinity College Program on Public Values, comprising both the Greenberg Center and a new Institute for the Study of Secularism in Society and Culture directed by Barry Kosmin. In 2007, he became Professor of Religion in Public Life at the College. Professor Silk is the author of Spiritual Politics: Religion and America Since World War II and Unsecular Media: Making News of Religion in America. He is co-editor of Religion by Region, an eight-volume series on religion and public life in the United States, and co-author of The American Establishment, Making Capitalism Work, and One Nation Divisible: How Regional Religious Differences Shape American Politics. In 2007 he inaugurated Spiritual Politics, a blog on religion and American political culture.","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/religionandpubliclife\/author\/msilk"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/religionandpubliclife\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/117","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/religionandpubliclife\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/religionandpubliclife\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/religionandpubliclife\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/222"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/religionandpubliclife\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=117"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/religionandpubliclife\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/117\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/religionandpubliclife\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=117"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/religionandpubliclife\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=117"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/religionandpubliclife\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=117"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}